


mourn with the moon and the stars up above

by teenagewaste



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, This is really just...sad, Thomas is sad, tdc movie compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 20:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13842513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenagewaste/pseuds/teenagewaste
Summary: Time doesn’t heal anything. Time makes you forget, and everyone thinks that forgetting is healing.





	mourn with the moon and the stars up above

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [mourn with the moon and the stars up above](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14462412) by [Harla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harla/pseuds/Harla)



They say time heals all wounds.

But personally? Thomas thinks it’s a load of shit. Time doesn’t heal anything. What time does is make you _forget._ And, y’know, of course it doesn’t make you forget the shitty things; things like the weight of a limp, dead body in your arms or the way a dagger went so smoothly in between fragile ribs. No, time makes you forget the things that used to help you wake up in the morning, the things that made you persevere. The things you kept in your head that reminded you that everything had possibly been worth it in the end. The wonderful things that you gripped onto like a vice to remind yourself that He was real.

He was real, and he was the sun and the breeze and the soft sound of birds singing in the early morning and he was the way that the moon cycled throughout the month and kept the tides stable. He was the crackle of the bonfire that was set up every night right before dusk, and the soft laughter of overjoyed, finally freed children that Thomas could hear from outside of the cabin he slept in every night, where he spent most of his time after arriving to the Safe Haven. The cabin that he woke up in every night in a cold sweat, after flashes of black blood and harsh coughs and explosions and a limp body that fell into him as if it were embracing him, before it hit the ground and stared up at him with blank, glassed over eyes. And he’d wake up to the waves, and he’d try to remember that Newt was real, even if he could only remember the end, but it only works sometimes.

No, time doesn’t heal anything. Time makes you forget, and everyone thinks that forgetting is healing.

 

 

* * *

 

Thomas very rarely left his cabin, mostly just to do his share of the work, help talk to some of the kids about what they had experienced, and eat sometimes. On nights where he didn’t come out to eat—which tended to be most nights—Frypan marched his way into Thomas’ cabin, sat down on the bed, put a bowl of food and a cup of water on the little table next to the head of the bed, and refused to leave until he saw Thomas eat at least half of what he’d given him. Maybe Thomas didn’t want to be around anyone, but he was grateful for Fry; he was grateful for the gesture, for the way his friend was always able to make him smile just a bit, for the way he never tried to talk to Thomas about _feelings_ , for the way that he never treated Thomas like he was glass (even though he sort of felt like it sometimes), and especially for the way he never tried to bring up Newt.

He didn’t like to spend his time around the others, not yet. It hadn’t been long since they got there, and he wasn’t ready to be around other people.

Minho and Brenda stopped by at least once a day; Minho one day, Brenda the next, or sometimes they’d mix it up and Thomas would get one of them for two or three days in a row before the other would come visit him. But they always came, without fail, and Thomas felt like the worst person on the planet for not being able to talk to them, for shutting them out. He gave them his best, he really did. But it seemed like his best really was never good enough. Brenda was the one who told him that he couldn’t save everyone, but with the weight that he felt on his chest, it felt like he had saved no one; Chuck, Teresa, _Newt._ None of them were here.

He failed them all.

 

* * *

 

Thomas isn’t sure when it happened; when he stopped remembering the beginning and only was able to remember the end. Okay, so, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. He didn’t forget the maze, or the scorch, or breaking into the city and Wicked. He obviously remembers. What he’s really forgotten is Newt. The things that made up the boy that he gladly would have taken that knife for.

At first, it was just general; he couldn’t remember exactly how tall Newt was in comparison to him like he once could count the inches, the centimeters, the _millimeters._ He couldn’t remember how long his limbs were in comparison to the rest of his body; how long his legs were from his hips down, the length of his arms from shoulder to the tip of his longest finger. He couldn’t remember what his silhouette looked like, or how he walked, or the way he ran, or the way his limp affected the way he moved, but it never seemed to slow him down (but Thomas would have waited for him; would have waited for him forever. Would have carried him on his back, his damn shoulders if he had to.) He forgot the way Newt would rub his hands up and down his bad leg—from his upper thigh to his knee—and hiss sharply through his teeth with a curse when he hit a spot that was too sore from all of the pressure he had been putting on it. 

Things that he once had memorized like the spelling of his own name.

He forgot little things. Small things. General things. Things he begged his mind to remember, but things that he could tolerate living without if it meant he could keep the important things.

 

* * *

 

Soon, though, the little things started to become bigger and bigger, and it happened so gradually that Thomas didn’t even really notice. Every night before he went to bed, after his nightly visits from Fry, Brenda, or Minho, he would read the letter Newt left him.

Sometimes he would read it just once, sometimes he would read it five, six, seven times. Sometimes he couldn’t even get past the first three lines. But he held on to the necklace, wore it around his neck every day with the letter rolled up inside just as it had been when Newt ripped it off of his neck and forced it onto Thomas.

Little things turning into big things. Big things being little things, but the little things were really what counted. The first thing that he really noticed disappearing from the front of his thoughts back into his distant memories was Newt’s skin. The tone of it; how it was pale with a slight pink flush to it, and how it only ever slightly tanned. The soft blond hair that covered his arms and legs, so light that it seemed as if it wasn’t even there in the first place. The soft feeling of his forearms, of his hands, his biceps, anything that Thomas had to grab at any point to pull Newt away from something that would have harmed him. The skin was soft to the touch, but Thomas couldn’t remember what it felt like, the only thing he could do was associate the words _soft_ and _skin_. There was a point in time where he would have been able to write a novel about Newt’s skin, but now he could barely tell you more than the fact that it was pale and soft.

The next thing to go was his hair. And maybe Thomas might be over using the word soft, but, well, it was _soft._ The hair that he once vividly remembered as a specific shade of blond; browner at some points and almost yellow at others. It was a shade of a color his eyes had never seen before, and Thomas had once been able to watch it turn from dirty-blond to golden shades, had been able to watch Newt brush the hair out of his eyes once it had grown too long. He had been able to watch the wind blow through it and make a mess of it and get dirt and grime stuck in it, but somehow, the blond always shone through. But that soon was all pushed from his thoughts back to his distant memories.

By the time Thomas had started to forget Newt’s facial features, he began to panic. He would stay up all hours of the night, trying to picture every single thing about the boy, reading and rereading the letter as if that would make everything come flooding back, like Newt did when the Flare was taking his memories. But it didn’t help him, it didn’t help him at all. Everything that he wanted to keep burned into the front of his brain like stigmata was slowly pushing itself back into his long term memory, and while it wormed its way backwards, with it, it took chunks of the memories and made them dull.

It made the memories weaker, as if they could break, as if he could forget Newt at any second. And he never wanted to forget about Newt, he wanted to remember him at the front of his mind forever. He wanted to remember everything about him, every strand of hair, every syllable that had ever come out of his mouth—and oh god, he was starting to forget what his mouth looked like—he just wanted to _remember._

Remembering was the only thing that he had to hold on to.

 

* * *

 

The facial features were the most important thing to Thomas. He thought about Newt every second of every day, tried to commit every last bit of his face to the very front of his brain and tattoo it there. He wanted it to be the first thing he saw when he woke up, the last thing he saw before he went to sleep. And he wanted to see it vividly.

But apparently, that’s not how things work, and life couldn’t just be easy on Thomas for once. He had to lose another piece of his life again.

He forgot Newt’s cheekbones first—high on his narrow face—then the square, sharp angels of his jaw. The next thing to go was the way his forehead creased in concentration while his tongue peaked out of the corner of his mouth slightly, too lost in whatever he was doing to notice the habit. Thomas never bothered to point it out, he could have watched Newt concentrate on something for hours and not have gotten bored of seeing his facial features change slightly just to return to the original forehead crease and tongue habit.

And after that was his mouth. His thin, pink lips that were often pursed in annoyance or frustration. He forgot the way that Newt chewed on his bottom lip when he was stressed; how sometimes they would get bloody and chapped because he gnawed at his lips while keeping everything bottled up inside, too busy worrying and caring about everyone else. He forgot the slight tick of his lips that always made his smile look more like a smirk, unless you worked hard enough and earned the smile that put the reflection of the moon off of the water to shame. Those were the best ones, the ones where he would full out smile, teeth and all.

Slowly, Thomas started to go insane. All of these things were fading and chipping and he couldn’t _remember_ every last detail. He desperately wanted to go back, wanted to see everything all over again just to make sure he could commit it to memory and be positive that nothing would be forgotten. But it had already been over and done with, and Thomas had to deal with the fact that Newt was gone, and the only things he had left were the greying memories of his mouth, and his facial features, and his mannerisms, and his hair, and his body.

But at least he could still remember his eyes and his voice.

Until the day that he couldn’t.

 

* * *

 

The day that Thomas woke up and looked at the brown ceiling and it was just the color _brown_ to him, he knew something was wrong. He knew he had lost something, knew he had lost a part of himself, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. 

Groggily, he stumbled out of bed and threw on a shirt, before making his way out of the cabin. His bare feet hit the sand, and he looked up at the sky, wondering where everyone went after they died. If they were up there, if they were under the ocean, or maybe if when they were buried their souls mingled under the soil. Or maybe there was nothing after, maybe this was what you lived and that was it.

Thomas stopped walking suddenly when something hit him. Soil. The ceiling of the cabin. They were both brown. But they were just _brown._ He could no longer compare the brown of wood and the brown of soil to the brown of Newt’s eyes. He couldn’t do it because he couldn’t _remember_ the exact color of Newt’s eyes anymore. What he used to remember as pools so dark chocolate brown that they almost looked black, almost swallowed his pupil whole, with small twists of gold when the light hit them at the right angle, was gone. All he could remember was that they were a dark shade of brown.

He couldn’t remember how easy it was to read Newt through his eyes if you looked hard enough, or the exact shape of his eyes, and he couldn’t remember how his big eyes remained so honest and _pure_ throughout everything they’d been through. Newt didn’t seem to have a dark cell in his blood. 

Ironic; the way he went out.

Thomas couldn’t remember the way Newt’s eyelashes looked when they fluttered against his cheeks; the dark lashes against pale skin, or the dark lashes against a blush. He couldn’t remember the way Newt looked at him sometimes, this look that Thomas could never quite figure out, but it was something fond, maybe even soft.

Just like all of the other ones, the thoughts of Newt’s eyes were pushed to the back of his head.

 

* * *

 

When Thomas lost Newt’s voice he was reading the letter for the fifth time in one night, when he suddenly drops the papers halfway through, realizing that he wasn’t reading it in Newt’s voice anymore. Newt wasn’t reading him the letter, Newt wasn’t telling him goodbye and that he deserved to be happy.

They were words on pieces of paper that once came from the fingertips from the mind of the boy he loved.

The way Newt said his name didn’t echo through his head anymore, he couldn’t hear Newt’s laugh, and in every single memory that he had of Newt, he no longer heard Newt’s voice. It was only an imposter trying to act as Newt’s voice; it was Thomas’ mind trying to force Newt’s voice into his head. But it wouldn’t come back. You can’t bring back what’s already gone.

And Thomas snapped. He picked the papers up off of the floor with shaky hands, putting the paper away as delicately as he possibly could and placing the necklace around his neck. He sat up in bed, tears streaming down his face— _When did he start crying?—_ and took his knees into his chest, his eyes shut tight, reciting the letter word for word. Maybe if he did what Newt did, maybe if he recited the letter the same way that Newt repeated _Winston, Alby, Chuck_ Thomas would be able to remember Newt again too, even for a little while. Just to appreciate the memories while he had them. All Newt was now was a memory, with nothing but a goodbye letter left behind. No pictures, nothing but words on paper. He could never see Newt again, never hear his voice again, never be able to apologize to for failing.

Time’s unfair. It makes you forget about the way golden brown hair shines in the sunlight and the way his eyes crinkled so much at the corners his eyes were practically shut when he laughed too hard or smiled too big. It makes you forget the laugh that calmed you on your worst days, and the feeling of the touch of the person you love. It makes you forget the exact moment you decided that you would give anything for that person to be happy; the exact moment you realized that you loved them.

Thomas can remember the end perfectly, though, even if most of the end feels as if it hadn’t even have been him doing it. He remembers the way Newt fought him for the gun, the way his put it up to his temple and fully intended on shooting himself in the head. Thomas isn’t sure how he would have been able to live if he had seen that. He remembers kicking the gun away from Newt. He remembers Newt coming in and out of Crank, begging Thomas to kill him—to kill him, how was Thomas supposed to do that?—and then he remembers a knife, he remembers it being pressed into his chest, he has the scar to prove it too, and he remembers Newt swinging uncoordinatedly at him with the knife, and then…that’s where he stops thinking. He remembers past that, he just doesn’t want to think about it.

Because who wants to think about the way they stuck a knife between two of their best friends ribs, and then held him as he died? The way Newt’s last word had been. “Tommy”?

No one.

 

* * *

 

He was real.

He was the soft sound of the waves crashing against the sand of the shore and he was the salt water that hit Thomas’ feet when he walked along the sea sometimes and he was the sound of the early morning chatter of kids that he’d help save from what would have been their certain deaths. Thomas couldn’t remember the beautiful things; he couldn’t remember all of the things that he wanted to remember, all of the things Newt said or the way he said them or the first time Thomas thought that Newt was the one spark of divinity in an otherwise bleak and pointless existence. But he could remember that Newt fought against the Flare inside of his veins long enough to rescue not only Minho, but twenty-eight children that were complete strangers to him, just to rescue them. He could remember that Newt was the closest thing to perfect that he could fathom, even without remembering the little time and the little things spent between them. But he could remember the way that Newt’s body looked on the ground with a dagger sticking out of his gut, black blood around the bottom half of his face. He remembered Newt’s red eyes rather than the brown ones that he could no longer remember.

And maybe that might be the worst of it all.

Remembering.

**Author's Note:**

> i was sad and got inspiration for this while talking to my friend, so i had to make everyone else sad, too.   
> everyone in this fic who isn't thomas is only mentioned, sorry about that.
> 
> anyway, i really hope this isn't the most ooc thing ever, but first tmr fic and all.   
> (i also suck at summaries oops)


End file.
